Work Text:
It was late in the evening when he woke; still half draped over his son's sleeping form. The boy had been unconscious for nearly 40 hours and the Royal Physician still could make no heads or tails on why his boy was sleeping this way. To make it worse he couldn't even tell when or if the boy would wake from his long sleep. If the man hadn’t been his doctor as a young man, he would have fired him by now. He still might if his son didn’t wake up.
Yinzhen knew he failed as a parent. He could feel it in the distance that had grown between himself and his child as they saw each other less and less as the boy grew. His beloved wife had hated the doctors' advice when the child first hatched. Being albino and ill meant that the boy wasn’t thought to make it past his first week. Let alone make it to adulthood. The boy had just turned eighteen. Eighteen and he hardly knew the boy. Not allowing themselves to grow attached to the boy had done no one any good. His wife could no longer bear to look at the boy for the weight of her guilt and Yinzhen himself could not find a way to gap the distance.
He had had several meetings with Soothsayer over the months leading up to his son’s birthday but now it looked like there would be no chance to try and build something resembling a relationship with the child now. He had tried to stay with the boy as a young boy but found himself weighed down by his work and as his son's illness grew worse the less he wanted to see the horrid state the child was in. He’d comforted himself by bringing on the Soothsayer and let himself drift away from the situation.
It was only with age that he could see how cruel his and his wife's actions had been. Yet there his son lay; flat on his back yet again in medical grey. The boy had endured more pain alone than he’d had to deal with in all 40 years of his life.
“ Your majesty?” Soothsayer’s voice drifted in as she came through a tray of tea and covered dish in hand. “Are you well?”
It was then that Yinzhen realized he had been chuckling to himself. It must have been an unpleasant sound as Soothsayer placed the tray in his lap with a look of deep concern on her face.
“ My apologies Soothsayer. I had only realized that despite my horrid attempts to distance myself from the boy over the years. I have only managed to hurt us both.”
The near shrug and shake of her head, as she sat, told him what she thought about that statement.
“I told you that 15 years ago your Majesty. It's taken you this long to admit to it?” The annoyance in her voice was clear to anyone listening. Something about the statement made Yinzhen want to laugh all over again. She was correct of course and had told both him and his wife so on more than one occasion. His wife; uhh he was unsure of how to begin with bring them back together. He’d loved her since he knew how to love at all but the years had not been easy. She has spent the last few out in the country as far from both him and their child as she could get. She too had grown distant over the years and during the boys' last bout of illness had left not to return until their son passed as she could not bear to watch him grow sicker.
“He’s going to live Sire. This I know; he will wake up. “Soothsayer's voice was granet. Yinzhen was sure she was correct. He hated to admit it; just the thought had jealousy boiling in his gut. He was the boy's father. This boy who had beaten all the odds. 45% of albinos didn’t make it to 5 as they were often killed before they could grow. The stigma against them had lessened over the years but it had not fully gone away. The isolation and illness should have done the boy in yet here he was brilliant and strangely kind.
He was indeed the boys' Father but he had no blindness to the fact that the child's parent was sitting in the chair opposite of him.
“I want to be a part of his life, both of your lives and I know the Empeross feels the same. I know Shen has no reason to believe it but it is true.”
Soothsayer said nothing as she pulled out her knitting from somewhere on her person. She simply began to hum as Yinzhen began to eat the meal he was given. It was a nice song.